Chef Tristen Epps opens tasting menu restaurant Buboy in Houston

“Internationally inspired cuisine” is a buzzword often used in the restaurant world, but for Chef Tristen Epps, it has a more personal connection.

The 36-year-old grew up in a family in Trinidad, his mother was a military lawyer. During his childhood he lived in many places, from Pensacola, Florida, to the Philippines, Guam and Gales Ferry, Connecticut.

Houston, he said, feels like home.

Epps, a chef nominated for a James Beard Award this year, first came to Houston about a decade ago before an appearance on a nationally televised cooking show led him to cook in kitchens across the country, including New York City, Denver and most recently Miami.

In Houston, Epps plans to open an Afro-Caribbean tasting menu restaurant called Buboy next year. This comes at a time when black chefs in America — from Kwame Onwuachi’s acclaimed Tatiana in New York to Senegalese tasting menu spot Dakar NOLA in New Orleans — are finally getting recognition for cooking dishes inspired by their heritage, running the kitchen and creating dishes on their own terms.

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Although Epps played soccer competitively as a child, food always seemed to play a big role in his life.

As a latchkey kid, he was fascinated when his mother taught him how to make scrambled eggs and watched hours of Food Network.

His first jobs all revolved around the food industry, from bagging food in the military cafeteria for tips to working at McDonald’s and Golden Corral during his high school years.

Epps then attended Johnson & Wales’ culinary school on campus in Charlotte, North Carolina, while working in kitchens.

“I never cashed my paycheck for anything other than cooking,” Epps said.

Initially, he suggested adding dishes like kallaloo to the menu, a stew of leafy greens with tomatoes and onions that is eaten throughout the Caribbean. But the chefs above him, who didn’t know the recipe, told him to call the dish “creamed spinach.”

“It always felt like you had to be pigeonholed,” Epps said. “French, Italian and a little Asian – that was the standard. In my mind, that was the only way to make it in fine dining restaurants.”

When Epps was ready to leave his job as a chef at a luxury resort in West Virginia, he wanted to live in a big, diverse city. Visiting New York or San Francisco seemed cliché, he said, so he chose Houston.

In February 2013, he landed a job as sous chef at Quattro, an Italian restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel downtown. While there, he also briefly cooked during the day at The Pass & Provisions, one of Houston’s pioneering restaurants.

As a chef in a hotel, you are well paid, says Epps, but he neither felt challenged nor had much freedom for creativity.

So he started cooking during the day at the luxurious Inn at Dos Brisas in the Texas Hill Country, which had an organic farm and an extensive wine cellar between Houston and Austin, then made the hour-and-a-half drive back to downtown Houston to work the evening shift at Quattro.

One day, Epps scrolled past an Instagram ad saying that auditions were being held in Austin for “Taste,” a reality cooking competition show that aired on ABC.

He decided to try it because he assumed Marcus Samuelsson, a celebrity chef from New York who was a judge on the show, would be there. Epps revered Samuelsson as one of the most successful black chefs in the restaurant industry.

The show, which also featured judges Anthony Bourdain and Nigella Lawson, informed him three days in advance that he had been shortlisted and would have to be in Los Angeles for a month of filming.

Although Epps did not win, he impressed Samuelsson.

“For me, he was the best chef in the competition,” said Samuelsson. “His dishes were characterized by honesty and craftsmanship that I had never seen before.”

A mentor-mentee relationship developed between the two, and when the show aired three months later, Epps moved to New York to work for the acclaimed chef.

When Epps wanted to put peanut stew on the menu at Samuelsson’s Red Rooster restaurant in Harlem, the chef agreed.

He then ran his own restaurant, Cooks & Captains, in Brooklyn, but it lasted only briefly before moving to Denver to work at Troy Guard’s restaurant Mister Tuna. In the early days of the pandemic, he reunited with Samuelsson to run Red Rooster in Miami. His cooking at Ocean Social Eden Roc Hotel Miami earned him a spot on the James Beard Award semifinalist list earlier this year.

“I always wanted black chefs to succeed without having to cook chicken, ribs or soul food,” Epps said.

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Epps moved to Houston this spring and recently completed a series of pop-up dinners as a preview of “Buboy,” the nickname of his grandfather, whom he plans to give the restaurant.

He envisions a restaurant with no more than 20 seats, a “warm, intimate space” where he can “tell the story of what you’re eating and why you’re eating it.”

If this sounds familiar, Houstonians may remember Indigo, where chef Jonathan “Jonny” Rhodes operated a 13-seat “neo-soul”-style fine-dining restaurant that opened in 2018 and closed in 2021.

Epps has big plans for Buboy: He is aiming for recognition from Michelin and the James Beard Foundation, among others, while also wanting to showcase Afro-Caribbean food from his perspective.

Epps’ friend Cleophus Hethington has had similar experiences as a black chef and is also committed to bringing African food into the spotlight. He recently joined Canje, an award-winning Caribbean restaurant in Austin, as executive chef.

“It’s not about fitting into the box that was built for us, it’s about creating our own box,” says Hethington, who worked with Epps in Miami.

Yet black chefs often feel that the opportunity to prepare dishes they can call their own is rare, chefs say.

“I find the balance between food for people and food for myself,” Epps said.

In the coming months, Epps plans to travel further around the world to research and inspire his upcoming restaurant plans in Houston.